The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual ManPatañjali
Religion
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual Man
Patañjali
Yoga -- Early works to 1800
The heart here seems to mean, as it so often does in the Upanishads,
the interior, spiritual nature, the consciousness of the spiritual man,
which is related to the heart, and to the wisdom of the heart. By
steadily seeking after, and finding, the consciousness of the spiritual
man, by coming to consciousness as the spiritual man, a perfect
knowledge of consciousness will be attained. For the consciousness of
the spiritual man has this divine quality: while being and remaining a
truly individual consciousness, it at the same time flows over, as it
were, and blends with the Divine Consciousness above and about it, the
consciousness of the great Companions; and by showing itself to be one
with the Divine Consciousness, it reveals the nature of all
consciousness, the secret that all consciousness is One and Divine.
35. The personal self seeks to feast on life, through a failure to
perceive the distinction between the personal self and the spiritual
man. All personal experience really exists for the sake of another:
namely, the spiritual man. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on
experience for the sake of the Self, comes a knowledge of the spiritual
man.
The divine ray of the Higher Self, which is eternal, impersonal and
abstract, descends into life, and forms a personality, which, through
the stress and storm of life, is hammered into a definite and concrete
self-conscious individuality. The problem is, to blend these two
powers, taking the eternal and spiritual being of the first, and
blending with it, transferring into it, the self-conscious
individuality of the second; and thus bringing to life a third being,
the spiritual man, who is heir to the immortality of his father, the
Higher Self, and yet has the self-conscious, concrete individuality of
his other parent, the personal self. This is the true immaculate
conception, the new birth from above, “conceived of the Holy Spirit.”
Of this new birth it is said: “that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit: ye must be born again.”
Rightly understood, therefore, the whole life of the personal man is
for another, not for himself. He exists only to render his very life
and all his experience for the building up of the spiritual man. Only
through failure to see this, does he seek enjoyment for himself, seek
to secure the feasts of life for himself; not understanding that he
must live for the other, live sacrificially, offering both feasts and
his very being on the altar; giving himself as a contribution for the
building of the spiritual man. When he does understand this, and lives
for the Higher Self, setting his heart and thought on the Higher Self,
then his sacrifice bears divine fruit, the spiritual man is built up,
consciousness awakes in him, and he comes fully into being as a divine
and immortal individuality.
36. Thereupon are born the divine power of intuition, and the hearing,
the touch, the vision, the taste and the power of smell of the
spiritual man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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